Jeb: Obama's Policies Making ISIS Fight More Difficult

President Barack Obama believes the fight against the Islamic State to be a "law enforcement exercise," but "this is a war," GOP candidate Jeb Bush insisted Monday, and the United States needs to act accordingly.

"All of the policy memos he's put in place and the intelligence restraints are making it harder for us to be successful in destroying ISIS," the former Florida governor told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "If that is the objective, we should declare war on ISIS."

Further, said Bush, the United States should allow interrogation of terrorists and enforce a no-fly zone in Syria.

"This is the problem of this presidency across the board," said Bush. "He always uses the strawman argument and it's why we have a weakened position as it relates to America as leadership in the world."

Bush said that he would have used the speech from the Oval Office Sunday night to be able to persuade people "that we're at war with Islamic radical terrorism, and that at such, we need to have a strategy."

Further, said Bush, Obama needed to persuade Americans that "our fears will subside when we are engaged in the destruction of ISIS."

"We need to engage diplomatically and politically across the board," said Bush. "But without a military plan, we're going to get to the objective, which is to take out ISIS and restore stability to a region that desperately needs it."

Also appearing on Fox News' "Fox and Friends," Bush warned that ISIS will "see our freedom as our weakness" and do all they can to attack the United States.



"We need to create a strategy that is complete for the annihilation of ISIS, because in the form of a caliphate, they gain their energy," said Bush. "They recruit terrorists from all around the world. They will create instability all around the world."

But Obama "does not want to lead," Bush said. And "we're not protecting the homeland to the degree that we should."

Further, Bush said that Obama should call for restoring the National Security Agency's collection of telephone metadata.

"Civil liberties are not being violated," he said. "To have the NSA have this information is part of a central tool for us to be kept safe."

But meanwhile, the idea that all religions have restrictions is "ridiculous."

"There are no radical Christians that are organizing to destroy Western civilization," said Bush. "There are no radical Buddhists that are doing this. This is radical Islamic terrorism. It is not showing disrespect to the religion of Islam to be clear about this. The simple fact is by not recognizing it, you end up creating strategies that are tepid and weak."

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